


White Noise

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-24
Updated: 2011-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean discover a family secret so well hidden that not even Missouri Mosely saw it coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Noise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Hoodie Time Dean h/c comment fic challenge #4

**It’s been a long time since Dean’s had the dream about the Nice Lady. Not since Sam first left for Stanford and Dean felt nothing like he’d expected to. He’d thought he’d be happy for Sam, but instead he’d felt like he’d been torn in half. Even though Sam’s back now, his anguish over Jess has invaded Dean’s dreamlife, filling him with a bottomless sorrow that the Nice Lady tries to ease, but can’t.**

 **  
_”Why, John Winchester, I thought you’d left town for good.” Her voice is sweeter than apple pie with ice cream. She pushes open the door without waiting for a response, and Daddy pushes him gently through, following with Sammy in his arms. “So these are your boys.”_   
**

_  
**“I thought I’d left for good, but I need help. It’s Dean, he -- he’s just stopped talking. It’s been five months, and I keep thinking he’ll come around, but --” Daddy stops talking then, like all his words are jammed up inside, like Dean’s are.**   
_

_  
**The Nice Lady kneels to look him in the eye. Her skin is a warm, dark brown, and her eyes are just as dark, but just as warm. “Oh, honey,” say says softly. Then she tells him says her name, Mizz something that he doesn’t catch, and asks if he’d like to come inside and just sit with her for a while.**   
_

_  
**“It’s okay, Dean,” Daddy says. “Go on. I’ll take care of Sammy.”**   
_

_  
**He doesn’t really want to, even though she’s nice. He wants his mommy. He wants Daddy to turn around and take him back to her, but he says she’s burned in a fire.**   
_

_  
**The lady sits and holds his hand for a while, tears shining in her eyes, and things get even more mixed up in his head than they had been. After a while she gives him pie and goes to talk to his dad.**   
_

**Always just that, no monsters, no weird shifts of scene. And Dean wakes up, words so backed up in his head and his chest he barely speaks for the rest of the day.**

***

“Aw, not another fucking kids-in-peril case,” Dean mutters, and Sam thinks it’s pretty much the first thing he’s said all day since they got the coordinates.

“I guess Dad knows how good you are with kids,” Sam says, but the only response that prompts is a scowl. Sam had been surprised -- scratch that, make it shocked -- at how well Dean had related to Lucas. The guy who sat down and drawn crayon pictures for the boy and talked to him with such simple honesty seemed like a completely different person from the guy who’d been leering at Lucas’ mom not long before.

“It’s not kids we’re gonna be working with. It’s parents whose kids disappeared. Moms. They’re the ones that are hard to take.”

Sam twitches a smile. “Why, because they’re immune to your charms?”

Dean slams Sam’s laptop closed. “Asshole.” Rising, he knuckles his back. “I’m gonna head out and get us some food. Chinese, pizza or something else?”

Sam groans. “I hate eating in motel rooms, man. Can’t we just go somewhere?”

“It costs more to eat out. Unless we stick with the dollar menu at Mickey D’s. You learn this stuff when you don’t have rich college buddies treating you to shit with their dad’s money.”

This shit is getting old. Dean reads every detail of Sam’s life for the past four years as a personal affront. He’s sorry he ever mentioned Brady and that weekend in New York -- it wasn’t like that was a fun-fest, from Sam’s point of view. He’d gone mostly so he could keep Brady from one epic self-destructive act that would probably be his last. Sam’s glad he went -- that weekend seemed to turn things around -- but mentioning it to Dean had been the height of stupidity.

“Pizza’s fine,” he says tightly, and Dean leaves without a further word. “’Asshole’ yourself,” he mutters at the door, then he opens the laptop to see what Dean had found.

He sees immediately what the mom remark was about. The photo accompanying the news story on the tab Dean left open shows a shattered woman holding a framed picture of a smiling little boy. According to the caption, the kid is the latest in a decades-long string of vanished children -- not weeks or months apart, but years. Without even thinking about it, Sam reaches for the scratchpad with the motel’s name stamped on it, finds a pen with the teeth marks on the cap and begins scrawling notes.

By the time Dean returns with dinner, Sam has worked out a pattern -- and one frustrating exception that doesn’t fit the pattern at all. He’s flipping through an online slideshow of pictures of the missing kids when Dean kicks at the door to be admitted.

As Sam lets him in, Dean says, “The taco pizza was on special, so that’s what I got.” At Sam’s groan, he demands, “ _What?_ ”

“You fart like a geriatric bulldog whenever you have one of those damn things.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I know. Four years is not enough time to wipe out the memory.”

Dean sets the pizza box on the rickety wooden table, along with a six pack and a stack of napkins. “No, I mean the old bulldog thing.”

“Jess’s family has an English bulldog. He’s hella old, and he stinks like three week old death.” They both realize Sam’s brought up Jess so casually, as if she’s still alive. A silence settles on the room, awkward and pained. “So hey, I found eleven disappearances in the past 70 years. There’s one right in the middle that doesn’t fit the pattern, but I took down all the details in case it sheds light on the others.”

“Fine. But shut up until we’ve finished eating; I want my taco pizza while the chips are still crunchy.”

“Dude, the chips are never crunchy.” Leaving the laptop open, Sam rises and heads for the bathroom to wash up. When he returns, Dean is standing stock-still, taking in the screen that Sam had left. “What? Did you see something?”

Dean shuts the laptop and flips open the pizza. “Nah. I just hate this fucking job already.” Grabbing one of the beer bottles, he levers the top off with his ring and hands it to Sam, then repeats the process for himself. He tears into the pizza, but it’s without his usual ridiculous joy in crappy road food.

“Listen, I have an idea,” Sam says. “A lot of the more recent articles quoted a spokeswoman for some group that deals with missing children. We might be able to get a lot of details from the one source, without having to talk to any moms. Why don’t we check that out first?”

“Sure,” Dean says around a massive bite of pizza. He swallows. “Good thinking, Sammy.”

Which, Sam knows, is as close as he’s likely to get to a “thanks” -- but he also knows that’s what it actually means. “It’s _Sam_ ,” he says, by way of “you’re welcome.”

***

In the morning after some preliminary research, they set out for the nearest major city, where the organization for missing kids is located.

Both Sam and Dean are a little edgy. Sam’s not sure whose restless night triggered his brother’s, or if that’s even how it worked, but both are running on a night of crappy sleep. On the road, Sam fills Dean in on what he’d found.

“These kidnappings -- or whatever they are -- have happened like clockwork for the past 81 years. Except for one case, which doesn’t fit the pattern at all.”

“Okay, tell me about the pattern first.”

“Every nine years, some kid disappears from his or her bed. Doesn’t matter if the windows were locked, and there’s no evidence of forcible entry, or lock tampering. The windows are just open and the kid is missing.”

“Any other similar details?”

“Yeah. The kids are all around five and six years old. Both boys and girls, white, black, hispanic or Asian -- whatever’s after them doesn’t seem to have a type.”

Dean rubs at his jaw, which is smooth-shaven for this interview, as is Sam’s. “So I’m thinking it’s less likely to be a spirit replacing a lost child than some kind of thing that feeds on or sacrifices these kids.”

“Seems like a possibility to me too.”

“Sonofabitch,” Dean mutters, and Sam’s not sure if he means the idiot weaving from lane to lane on this stretch of interstate, or this case, these kids. “And what about the one that doesn’t fit the pattern?”

“That one was 22 years ago. So it was five years after one disappearance and four years before the next. A man walked off with a 4-year-old boy in broad daylight when the mother was distracted.”

“And they never found the kid?”

“No.”

“That sounds like garden variety human fuckery to me,” Dean says. “Poor kid’s probably been in a shallow grave for the last 21 years.”

There’s nothing Sam can think of to say to this, so he lapses into silence, letting the mullet rock wash over him.

***

Dean’s relief at escaping a string of traumatized mothers was premature, they discover. It should have been obvious from the jump that the kind of woman who becomes the spokesperson for an organization devoted to missing children _is_ a traumatized mother -- or was, before she built a tough shell of activism over her pain.

It’s not that Georgia LaBianca isn’t professional. When Dean tells her they’re researchers for _America’s Most Wanted_ , she goes into swift, competent action, reciting each case off the top of her head -- no, not reciting, because she isn’t just parroting facts. Each case means something to her. And that’s where she goes beyond the woman whose actions match her crisp, perfectly groomed style.

It’s Dean’s who catches on first, and once he gives Sam a meaningful look, Sam wonders why he hadn’t figured it out as well. There’s an edge to her efficiency, a sharpness in the structure of her thin (almost too thin) body and face, as if unresolved grief is a master jeweler, cutting away everything that isn’t flawless stone. She’s a diamond -- angles and planes, coolness and brilliance, glittering and hard.

Dean scrawls his own set of notes, getting some details that the news stories had gotten wrong or omitted entirely. As they continue asking questions, the woman’s green eyes laser in on Dean. Not that she wasn’t intense to begin with, but there’s something new in her gaze that Sam can’t quite read, but it unsettles him, and when Dean cuts him a sidelong glance, Sam knows his brother sees it too.

As he finishes his notes, Dean says, “Those all follow the pattern we’re looking into for the show, but we noticed there’s another unsolved disappearance in Grant county that doesn’t fit. Can you tell us anything about that?”

She cocks her head just a bit, studying Dean. “What led you to do this kind of work? Not the television job, but the type of show. Did you have any experience with this kind of crime?”

“What, abduction? No. But I’ve always been interested in helping people. Hunting bad guys.”

She doesn’t turn the question on Sam, doesn’t break her gaze from Dean, who shifts uncomfortably.

“There’s nothing wrong with doing this kind of work because of a trauma in your past,” she says.

“Um, no. Of course not,” Dean responds, a small furrow between his brows betraying the fact that he’s perplexed. Somehow it doesn’t occur to Dean that he _has_ gone into the work he does because of past trauma. Trauma is something other people have, not Winchesters.

“Tell me about yourself,” she says. “How did you come to this job?”

Sam doesn’t believe he’s ever heard Dean lie so badly, clearly unnerved by the increasing intensity of her gaze. He should have been able to sell the _father in law enforcement_ line, has sold it plenty of times in the past, but Dean’s losing his way.

Just as Sam’s seriously considering grabbing Dean and making an excuse to high-tail it away, she abruptly says, “I’m here because of my son.” She takes a small gold-colored frame from where it sits her computer and passes it across the desk to Dean. “That’s him, that’s Michael. I lost him 22 years ago.” Her gaze sharpens on him as he takes it.

“Oh,” Dean manages to say, but his usual glibness fails him.

Sam spackles the hole in the conversation with an _I’m sorry to hear that_ , but she keeps her focus on Dean.

“He’s the one that doesn’t fit,” Dean says, an odd note of distraction in his voice.

“That’s right. He was taken in broad daylight, from the McDonald’s in Barberville. I was at the counter, ordering and settling a fight between my daughters, and Michael wandered far enough off that a man walked out with him without anyone taking notice.”

“Someone saw, or this was caught on the camera?” Sam asks.

“A girl who worked the counter saw them, but she thought he was Michael’s father.”

Sam wouldn’t have thought such a thing as a sympathetic smirk existed until he sees the one Dean offers her. “You don’t have to be the sharpest tack in the toolbox to work at --”

She raises a well-manicured hand. “No, it’s understandable. At that age kids don’t have the kind of instincts someone who’s lived three or four decades has developed. Rachel’s become a very good friend over the last two decades, and an important volunteer here.”

Sam clears his throat. “Well. I think we have enough for now. If the producers decide to develop this, someone will be in touch.”

Though Dean shoots Sam a look, he smoothly adds his agreement and his thanks as he hands back the photo and slips his notebook into his shirt. They’re almost to the door when she says, “Give my best to John. If you see him.”

Sam’s heart skitters in his chest, and from the expression on Dean’s face before he turns back to her, it looks like his does too.

“Ma’am?” Dean says.

“John Walsh. I’ve met him through my work here.”

“Oh. Sure. We’ll be sure to do that,” Dean stammers, and claps Sam on the arm to propel him through the door.

“Smooth,” Sam says.

“Yeah, well, I nearly pissed myself.” Dean digs his keys from his pocket as they hurry toward the car. “Is it just me, or was there a seriously weird vibe going on in there?”

“Wasn’t just you, man. Though it was you she was fixated on.”

“Well, I am a handsome devil.” But the grin Dean offers with this pronouncement is more unsettled than the one that usually accompanies his bragging. “Nah, but I think she made us. She’ll be on the phone to her good friend John in 3 ... 2 ... 1.”

Doubtful she’d get through his army of staffers, not to mention his bodyguards, but she wouldn’t have to. All she’d have to do is ask if there’s a Kirk McCoy and a Rand Chapel working there. (Speaking of which, Sam won’t feel any great loss tossing his ID, and he’s so making his own next time.)

Without even discussing it, Sam and Dean start packing up their things the moment they enter their motel room.

“How are we gonna work the case, Dean?” Sam asks. “She knows this area intimately, and each one of the disappearances.”

“Hate to say it, but I think we give this one a pass. We’ll call Bobby Singer on the way out of town, have him put another hunter on it. _Man_ , I knew this job would be trouble. I _hate_ these damn kids-in-peril cases.”

Duffel slung over his shoulder, Sam strides to the door and yanks it open, startled to find a young woman standing there, fist raised to knock. Equally rattled, she takes a step back, a hand clutching at her long, light brown hair.

“Miss?”

“I need to talk to you,” she blurts. “About those missing children.”

The skin at the back of Sam’s neck goes tight, but he keeps his face carefully blank. “Missing children? I’m afraid you have the wrong room.”

“Sam,” Dean chides, pulling him back from the door.

Their visitor’s hazel eyes widen and she pushes into the room. “Oh god. Mikey!” She hurls herself into Dean’s arms.

“Whoa whoa whoa! What the hell?” He disengages her as swiftly as he can, throwing Sam a look.

“I can’t believe it’s you!”

“Lady, it’s not me. Well, it is, but I’m not who you think.”

But she’s not hearing him, crying and reaching out to touch him as if to be sure he’s really there.

“Sugar,” Dean says, “try to calm down. You’ve totally got the wrong guy.” Again he shoots a look at Sam, whose normally his go-to guy for comforting weeping women, but Sam’s frozen.

Because the neck-prickling feeling from before is stronger still, as Sam starts to notice little details. Like the lush lips, quivering now, the sandy hair, the dusting of freckles. A sick knot of dread forms in Sam’s stomach.

A car pulls up outside the still-open door of their motel room, and Georgia LaBianca gets out.

“Oh, Christ,” Dean mutters.

“Mom,” says the young woman, her tears riding choppy waves of hiccups. “It’s him, Mom, it’s him. Just like you said.”

“Wait a fucking minute,” Dean says. “You sent her here? Lady, I’m not your son.”

“I believe you are.” Georgia hands over a flyer with the header _MISSING_ , with a picture of a small boy with a slice of birthday cake and a computer-generated composite of what he’d look like 20 years later. It looks a helluva lot like Dean. There are small things that are off, but in the main details, it’s eerily accurate.

Sam can see Dean reining in his building freakout, pushing away the urge to lash out. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, I am.” His voice is gentle, but there’s a hint of roughness to it. “But I was born in Lawrence, Kansas. I lived there until I was almost five. I get that you want to see your boy more than anything in the world, but I am not him.”

“Look,” Sam says gently. It’s time to shed the lie and the selves Georgia never believed in to begin with. “What he says is true. He’s my big brother, and we’ve spent our whole lives together.”

“You came to me to ask those questions for a reason,” Georgia insists. “And it wasn’t for _America’s Most Wanted_ , because they never heard of you two.”

Dean casts a wild-eyed look Sam’s way, but Sam can’t think of a plausible story any more than his brother can.

“Something in you wants to know about the family you lost,” Georgia continues, “but you’re afraid to lose the family you have.”

“Please, Mikey,” Georgia’s daughter says. Digging into her jacket pocket, she produces a small pair of red mittens. Wordlessly, she holds them out toward him, cradled in her hands.

Sam’s heart shatters at the sight of this tiny relic, so reverently handled. At the same time, he feels a rising dread he can’t quite explain.

“Angela’s home is just a couple of miles away,” Georgia says, her voice as gentle as Dean’s had been. “We could sit down and talk about this.”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing to--” Sam begins, but Dean cuts him off.

“Sure, I think we should.”

Sam shoots him a look, but Dean’s smoothed his expression over with a sincere mask that Sam knows well.

“We’ll follow you there,” Dean adds.

Angela darts in and hugs Dean, a tiny scrap of red knit visible in one clutched fist. There’s a damp patch on Dean’s shirt when she finally releases him. “I missed you, Bunny.”

“So did I,” Georgia says, but she’s visibly holding back, gauging Dean’s expression. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

When they settle into the Impala, Sam half expects a snort and a crack about “Bunny,” but he’s silent.

“Are you sure about this?” Sam asks, but Dean doesn’t respond.

He gets his answer when there’s a straight stretch of road where the traffic is clear. Dean executes an abrupt bootlegger turn, sending up a spray of gravel and dirt as the Impala drifts onto the shoulder before it straightens and speeds away from Georgia’s car.

Dean flicks Sam a glance. “Right now I feel like the biggest asswipe in the entire world.”

***

Beyond a couple of brief references to “the crazy ladies,” Dean doesn’t mention the incident again, but Sam can tell the encounter affected him. Sam relays Dean’s notes on the string of missing kids to Bobby Singer, who calls him in two weeks to inform them that “the damn thing’s been taken care of.” At least they’ve made Georgia LaBianca’s life that small bit better, though it’ll be nine years before she realizes it.

They drift from job to job, steering well clear of the tri-state area where Georgia and Angela live. Dean’s too quiet and solemn, and the rare times his mood lightens, all it takes is the sight of a kid or a flash of red knit to make him go quiet. When they pick up supplies at a Wal-mart, Sam finds Dean lingering by the posters of missing kids, his gaze sweeping over the faces. Sam doesn’t know what to do to snap him out of his funk.

In truth, Sam’s unsettled himself. One night, when Dean’s fallen into a deep sleep after a few beers, Sam opens his laptop and reviews the abduction of Michael LaBianca. The boy’s picture haunts him. It _does_ look like Dean. There’s also a security camera picture of a man and a boy walking hand in hand. The only view is from the back, but if you add a few pounds, it could be Dad’s back. But then, it could be a million other men’s backs.

The girl at the counter who’d unwittingly watched the abduction had seen Michael approach the booth where the man sat, drawn by the baby in a car seat-carrier beside him. He’d hovered by the baby, smiling and flirting as small children do with babies, Then a group of high school kids had come in and in the confusion the man had left with both children. The chaos with the schoolkids had masked the boy’s disappearance even longer, and by the time the police were involved, the trio was long gone. There was no Amber alert system back in those days, and only so many milk cartons.

And, a voice whispers in the back of Sam’s head, when a hunter wants to drop from sight, no one’s going to find him.

 _Bullshit. Not Dad. Besides, Dean remembers the fire. Occasionally remembers things he lost in the fire. This is his brother, not some random kid snatched from his mother._

But Sam can’t stop turning the facts over in his mind, can’t erase the image of the brokenhearted sister, the brittle mother. He sees Angela’s freckles, Georgia’s green eyes. The plump, shapely lips that they both share. Once in a while, he finds himself back on the website with the pictures and the details. And once, when he’s sure he didn’t leave that tab open, he finds it awaiting him when he opens the laptop to research a job.

“Dean --” He tries to think how to phrase the question he wants to ask.

“What?”

Sam has only half his attention -- or maybe Dean’s merely pretending he’s engrossed in the snowy _Girls Gone Wild_ infomercial. “Dude, they’ve been showing the same three clips for the last half hour.”

“But those three clips are pure gold, Sammy.” As Dean turns his gaze toward Sam the page on his browser catches his eye. “Shut that the fuck down, Sam,” he snaps.

Sam obeys without protest, but he says mildly, “Maybe you should talk about this whole thing.”

“ _No._ There’s nothing to talk about.”

But as Sam sees it, it’s more that there’s plenty to not talk about.

***

 **Dean dreams of the Nice Lady more and more. Sometimes they just sit together, not talking. Sometimes they sit on the long sofa in her bright kitchen, Dean curled up with his head in her lap as she strokes his hair**

 **  
_”I know, sweetheart. You miss your mama. Of course you do. It’s okay to let it out.”_   
**

**But he’ll never let it out; it’s buried too deep inside.**

***

Then Sam has a dream that sends them to Kansas. He grabs Dad’s worn journal from Dean’s bed and opens it to the place where Dad has kept the few pictures they have. The one of the four of them -- Mom, Dad, Dean and Sam -- is slightly out of place. He’s seen Dean gazing at it when he thinks Sam’s not looking, his thumb worrying along the photo’s edge. Without remarking on that, Sam passes the picture to Dean. “That tree. I saw it in my dream. The people who live there now -- they’re in trouble, Dean. I know it.”

“I swore I’d never go back to Kansas, Sam.” Dean’s voice is rough, a scrape of sandpaper passing over splintered board. It’s a reluctance he picked up from Dad, who passed on any job involving Kansas to Caleb or Bobby or another hunter he trusted. Too much loss there, and all the good memories had gone up in flame.

“I know,” Sam says softly.

“But I think I have to. Get things clear in my head.”

“Sure,” Sam says. “I’ll be with you.”

Looking at Sam with exaggerated pleading in his face, Dean quavers, “Hold me, Sammy.”

It’s such a relief to see the obnoxious big brother again that Sam can hardly suppress his grin as he says, “Oh, get bent.”

***

Standing beside the Impala, Sam stares at the house where he spent the first six months of his life. He feels he should recognize it, but the only things that look familiar are the tree and the small portion of the house’s facade that shows in the photo. When he glances over at Dean, his brother is wearing an expression that looks like it must mirror Sam’s own.

“Fuck, I’d like to walk away from this case,” Dean says quietly.

Sam wishes it were possible to oblige him, but his dream led him here for a reason. He ignored the dreams about Jess, and he’ll never get past the guilt of that. Knowing he needs to say just the right thing here, he chews at his lip, then comes out with, “Want me to hold your hand?”

Dean huffs out a laugh as he delivers a punch to Sam’s shoulder. “Bitch.”

Resisting the urge to rub the ache away, Sam says, “Jerk.”

Their mood lifted, they walk toward the house that once was their home.

***

“I don’t know about this,” Dean says later as they stand on Missouri Mosely’s porch, regarding the sign that says the psychic’s with a client, enter and wait quietly. “Psychic bullshit.” Belatedly, he casts a glance toward Sam but doesn’t follow that with an apology.

“Dad apparently believed,” Sam says. “Missouri told him the truth about what’s out there.”

“Yeah,” Dean responds, and nods decisively. He pushes the door open and leads the way into the little waiting area. “What, no magazines?”

Sam shushes him and gets an eyeroll in response. They sit on the padded wicker furniture, Dean tapping his fingertips restlessly on his knees.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Dean mutters.

“Do you want to help Jenny and her kids, or not?”

Jaw muscles pulsing, Dean picks up one of the crystals resting on the coffee table. “Does this make my aura look fat?”

Sam offers a distracted smile at the joke, but any other response is crowded out by a memory that suddenly surfaces. “You know I was fifteen before I knew this --” he raps gently at the table with a knuckle -- “is what people meant by ‘coffee table’?”

“What?”

“How many times did we ever even stay in a place with a coffee table? Two? Three? I’d see that phrase in a book, and what I’d picture is one of the tables in the places we rented, where Dad would drink his coffee and spread out his notes. Like the one in our room now.”

“Huh,” is all Dean can think of to say to this piece of information.

Which is fine with Sam, because it saves him from recounting the embarrassing story about how he found out he’d been wrong all that time. Though at least he hadn’t said _I thought that was the whiskey table._ Or, just as apt, _the feet table_.

Dean springs up again, wandering around the waiting room, touching some of the New Age knickknacks, leaning in to peer at others while studiously avoiding touching them. The one thing that makes him say “What the hell is this?” is the white dome that rests on the floor near the inner doorway.

“White noise machine,” Sam says. “Like they use in a therapist’s office.”

That earns Sam a narrowed gaze, but before Dean can comment or question the source of this knowledge, the soft murmur of voices grows louder and more distinct.

“Thank you so much,” says a female voice.

“You’re more than welcome, honey,” says another woman’s voice, soft and Southern. ”You just keep going, and things’ll get better. You’ll see.”

Dean’s head goes up at the sound of her speech, eyes wide.

“Dean?” Sam says, but Dean’s attention is focused on a point behind and above Sam.

The door closes with the delicate tinkle of chimes that had ushered them in, and a woman appears in the waiting room. Sam half expected her to swoop into the room wrapped in a Gypsy shawl and a mysterious air, but it turns out she’s a regular woman in a brown sweater over a pink shirt. Dean, however, is staring at her like he’s never seen anyone like her.

Though Sam expects her to bristle, she smiles at Dean with warmth. “Nice Lady, huh? That’s a lot more flattering than some things I’ve been called. Dean and Sam, you boys come on in the kitchen where we can sit down and have a proper conversation.”

As she steams out of the room, Sam and Dean exchange dumbfounded looks, only to be chided, “You might want to close those mouths before you start drawing flies.”

“Okay,” Dean mutters, “how is she doing that?”

As they emerge into the large, sunny kitchen, Missouri turns to regard them. “Let me look at you two. Oh, you boys grew up handsome.” She takes Sam’s hand in both of hers. “Sam, I’m so sorry about your girlfriend. And Dean, you -- oh my, we have to talk. Just _slow down_.”

“I haven’t said a thing,” Dean protests.

“Well, no wonder. It’s all jammed up in your head.”

“This isn’t what we came for,” Dean says. “There’s a family we’re trying to help. They live in the house we grew up in, and I think there’s something in there.”

Missouri peers at Dean intently for a long moment, then says, “Give me your hand.”

Dean makes no move to do her bidding, but she reaches out and grabs one of his hands before he can fend her off.

“Oh, honey,” she breathes.

Sam sees Dean throw up the walls that keep his emotions from spilling out where others can see them. But he knows Missouri can feel them through the iron grip she has on his hand, and Sam can read them through Missouri’s growing distress.

She reaches up to lay her other hand on Dean’s cheek, her brown hand against his too-pale skin. “I have done a terrible thing.”

“Stop it,” Sam says, but the two of them are lost in memory.

“I didn’t mean -- “ She closes her eyes tightly, grief and very real anguish marking her features. “I am so very sorry.”

Before Sam can break himself free of his horrified fascination to pull Dean away from her, Dean has done it himself, shaking off the contact, growling, “What did you do?”

Missouri sways on her feet and Sam seizes her elbow, looking around for the nearest seat. There’s a large, slipcovered sofa by one window, one end of it scattered with books. Sam leads her there, settling her onto it, then he turns toward Dean.

“Come sit down, Dean. We need to figure out what’s going on.”

“No. I don’t want to.” Dean’s voice sounds faraway, high-pitched -- the voice of a child.

“I’m right here,” Sam says, trying to sound reassuring instead of freaked out himself. “Nothing’s gonna happen while I’m here.” Which is a ridiculous reassurance, since what they’re all afraid of already happened over two decades ago.

Once Dean drops onto the sofa, careful distance maintained from Missouri, Sam pulls up a kitchen chair to face them. He forces his voice into calm, measured tones. “Missouri, tell me what happened back then.”

Drawing in a deep breath, she smoothes her dress over her thighs. “Your daddy John had been coming to see me after what happened to your mama. He knew what he’d seen that night wasn’t an electrical fire, or anything else a fire marshal could explain.”

“Were we with him then?” Sam asks.

“No. He left town and then he came back, and that’s when I saw you two for the first time. He came because Dean stopped talking, and John hoped I could help him.”

“We sat on this couch,” Dean says.

“Yes, we did, sugar,” Missouri says. “We didn’t talk, but I could feel your sadness. But I read it wrong. You were suffering because you were pulled away from your mama, but I thought it was the fire you were thinking of. Oh, lord.” She puts a hand to her head briefly, then drops it. “There was a darkness in John -- not evil, but maybe madness. He had it walled off, and I was young and afraid to go after it because oh, it unsettled me when I caught a glimpse.”

“This can’t be true,” Dean says. “I remember the fire. The smell of smoke and the heat, I remember Dad putting Sammy into my arms and telling me to run.”

“Dean, almost every child has memories that read the same way to me,” Missouri says. “They’ve heard family stories so many times that they have built memories out of them. But they don’t come across to me the same way true memories do. Your daddy told you about that night so many times you have painted the scenery and added the props.”

Dean’s expression hardens as his hands clench into fists. “So you’re saying my real family is those women, and Dad is a kidnapping sonofabitch, and Sam’s just a stranger I grew up with.”

Sam has taken some hard hits in his hunting life, but this last statement steals his breath faster than any of them. Before Sam can react, Missouri has seized one of Dean’s fists in her hand.

“Dean Winchester, don’t you talk such nonsense. Of course Sam’s not a stranger. Your daddy believed you were who he said you were -- an outright lie would never have gotten past me, but a delusion that he believed with his whole heart ...” Sam can hardly bear the expression on her face, so full of heartache and grief and guilt for missed signals.

 _Just like me._

Squeezing Dean’s hand briefly, she launches herself off the sofa and says, “I’m going to make some tea.”

“Right color, wrong liquid,” Dean mutters, and Sam can’t believe he’s able to make something so near a joke.

Sam has no idea what to do to make this better -- there _is_ no making this better. Dean must feel like he’s at the edge of an abyss. The only thing he can think to do is bump Dean’s leg lightly with his fist once and then a second time. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easily,” he says, quietly enough that it’s hidden under the sound of Missouri running the faucet. “We’re brothers, no matter what happens.”

Dean doesn’t answer, but the almost imperceptible easing of the tension in his shoulders is enough of a response.

Sam turns his attention to Missouri, who has settled the teakettle onto the flame, but still has her back to them. “This isn’t your fault, Missouri.” But he knows she doesn’t believe him.

“Look,” Dean finally says. “We don’t have time for family drama. There’s another family in that house that we have to help. There’s still something in there, and we have to deal with it.”

That gets Missouri to face them. “You’re right. You boys tell me what you know.”

***

It gives Sam a pang to see the way Dean looks around the house on this second visit. While Sam has no memories of the real home he’d known so briefly, Dean has a layer of false memories peeling away.

“Let’s get to it,” Sam says briskly, to help Dean shake off the strangeness and view this as a job like any other. It seems to work, as Dean gives a nod and heads up the stairs.

Missouri leads the way into Sari’s bedroom. “If there’s a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it.”

“Why?” Sam asks.

“This used to be your nursery, Sam. This is where it all happened.”

While there’s no sign of what happened -- the room has been rebuilt and remodeled after the fire gutted it completely -- Sam feels a chill breath along the back of his neck. Casting a glance at Dean, he sees his brother hovering in the doorway.

Dean _never_ hesitates. It’s just not who he is, and much as his rash bravery scares the living shit out of Sam, this uncharacteristic faltering unnerves him.

“What are you waiting for, boy?” Missouri says. “Grass to grow under your feet?”

Relief floods through Sam as Dean collects himself and moves into the bedroom. As Missouri turns back to the task at hand, she casts Sam a quick look that signals her own concern.

As they watch, Missouri walks through the room, attuned to whatever energies she’s finding here. At last she says, “I don’t know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved, but this ain’t the thing that took your mom.”

Sam can’t bring himself to look toward Dean at this, unsure of whether it would mean _you poor bastard_ or _at least you still have a mom_ , and which of these would be the most hurtful.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean says, his voice rough. “We’ll toast the sonofabitch whatever it is.”

Once they’ve placed the hex bags and the poltergeist has gone quiet, Sam’s still unable to banish his disquiet. The image he saw of Jenny never came to pass, and the dreams have been nothing if not literal before.

“Listen, man,” Sam tells Dean when they’ve slung their weapons and demolition tools into the Impala’s trunk. “If you want to head back to the hotel or go have a drink, that’s cool, but I want to hang out here a while and watch things.”

Eyes narrowing, Dean gives him a searching look. “The thing’s gone, Sam. I mean, if you feel like having a moment with the house and all, I’ve got no problem with that --”

Maybe that’s a little of it, if Sam’s honest with himself. But it’s not the entire reason. “No -- I see things exactly how they happen, Dean. What I saw in the dream, it hasn’t happened.”

“That was the whole point of hatcheting the hell out of Jenny’s house, dude. It’s not going to happen.”

“I just -- it doesn’t feel finished to me. Go if you want to, I don’t mind. But I want to keep watch for a while.”

Stroking the gleaming skin of the Impala, Dean looks across the street to the house. Sam imagines he can see the suppressed yearning in his brother.

“Nah,” Dean finally says. “We’ll stake the place out.”

They haven’t been keeping watch for long when Sam sees Jenny at the upstairs window, pounding the glass. The sound of her screams don’t reach them in the Impala, but he knows what he’s seeing and he scrambles out of the car and runs full tilt to the house, Dean on his heels.

“You grab the kids,” Dean shouts. “I’ll get Jenny.”

Sam has them almost out the door when something grabs him and slams him to the floor, dragging him backward and pinning him to a wall. He wonders if he’ll die here, in the house where his mom burned. Faintly he hears the sound of an ax against the front door as a fiery figure in flowing white approaches him.

As Dean breaks through and raises his gun, Sam shouts for him to hold his fire. “I know who it is. I can see her now.”

“Mom?” Dean asks quietly, as the fire dies away around her.

She directs her gaze to Dean, her eyes soft and sorrowful. “Oh, sweetheart.” Turning toward Sam, she says, “Sam.”

Tears leak down Sam’s cheek, but he’s powerless to raise a hand and wipe them away.

“I’m sorry,” Mom murmurs.

“For what?” Sam asks, but she doesn’t answer. Instead she turns and shouts toward the ceiling, fierce and beautiful. As she’s enveloped in a column of flame, all he can think is _JessMom_ over and over in the few short seconds before she vanishes. When it’s finally over, another name pushes into his consciousness.

 _Dean._

Released from his invisible bonds, Sam says, “It’s over.” When he turns toward Dean, he sees his brother’s face is as damp with tears as his own.

***

It seems like every time Sam walks into a room, Dean is looking through the box of pictures Jenny gave them. He never says anything as he gathers the small stack and tucks them back in the box, and Sam can’t imagine what must be going through his mind.

The photos are a mixed blessing for Sam, a reminder of the family he had and lost. For Dean it’s so much more complicated than that. A sign of what was stolen from him, of being forced to take up the life of a little boy who -- Sam’s certain of it -- died in the fire that took his mother. Except it’s not that boy’s life, but another one entirely, one that no kid should have to endure. And now, 22 years later, Dean -- _Michael_ \-- is so Stockholmed that he can’t even imagine another life.

After the fifth time he catches Dean looking through the photos, Sam doesn’t comment, but he slips Georgia LaBianca’s business card into the box when Dean’s out of sight. Sam’s not around for the sixth time he delves into the box, but when he lets himself into the hotel room, Dean’s waiting for him, thrusting the card out between two fingertips. “What the hell is this?”

Setting down his bag of Chinese takeout, Sam says, “I’ve been looking for that.”

“Like hell.”

“Okay, I thought maybe we should go back and see Georgia.”

“No,” Dean says without hesitation. “That’s not my life anymore.”

“But Dean --” Before he can continue, a fist-size ball of emotion jams his throat. What can he say, anyway? _But you could have sisters. You could quit hunting._ He doesn’t even know.

“Stop,” Dean says. “You and Dad, you’re my family. I can’t change that now.”

An immense feeling of relief blows through Sam, so powerful that his knees wobble. “I’m glad,” he says quietly. HIs eyes water, and he hastily palms away the moisture. “I think they overdid with the Thai red peppers.”

“God, Sammy, you are such a wuss,” Dean mutters as he rises and rummages through the takeout bag.

“Jerk,” he says, which is not particularly called for, but Sam wants the familiar call-and-response of his teens and beyond.

Dean doesn’t disappoint. “Bitch.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Prompt by [](http://nong-pradu.livejournal.com/profile)[**nong_pradu**](http://nong-pradu.livejournal.com/) : _I read this prompt somewhere else* and never saw it filled, so here goes. The real Dean Winchester dies in the fire with Mary in 1983, and John cracks. A month or two after the event John sees a kid that he swears is his eldest son (who he refuses to believe is actually dead) and decides to take him home to be with his family where he belongs (essentially kidnapping him). This kick-starts the whole Winchesters-on-the-road nomadic lifestyle, and New!Dean is raised to think he's always been Dean._
> 
>  _Cue many years in the future when New!Dean learns the truth. (Maybe repressed memories resurface when he sees and recognizes one of his blood siblings while on a hunt.) I'd love for Dean to be the baby of his real family, with two older sisters who want to spoil their now grown up baby brother. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! And Sam and John being all "He's ours! You can't have him!"_
> 
>  _The hurt/comfort comes in the form of serious aaaaangst and Dean's feelings of lost identity._
> 
> * [](http://doylescordy.livejournal.com/profile)[**doylescordy**](http://doylescordy.livejournal.com/) has turned up as the original prompter.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Can't sleep for all the white noise (The signal to noise remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/621689) by [counteragent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/counteragent/pseuds/counteragent)




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